Coheed and Cambria Frontman: Renters Turned My Country House Into an Illegal Pot Farm

Recently, Coheed and Cambria frontman Claudio Sanchez has been dealing with a lot more than simply creating the band's upcoming album The Color Before the Sun. In a new interview with Prog, the singer revealed a legal nightmare he and his wife went through after renters turned their country home into an illegal cannabis farm without their knowledge.

Sanchez and his wife had been renting out the house while spending their time globe-trotting, but last year -- after Coheed released The Aftermath: Descension and Sanchez's wife got pregnant -- they thought about moving back. “In anticipating his birth we were contemplating moving back to the country house,” the singer says. “It was time for us to do the yearly inspection but it kept getting put off. My wife got a text from the renters, saying the house had been broken into. We thought it was odd so we called the police. They said no one had been living in the house – but they suspected it had been turned into a cannabis farm.”

Things got worse for them in the lead up to their son Atlas’ birth. “There was no real evidence aside from the smell and the residue, but they [police] thought it was a $300,000-a-month operation,” the singer continued. “We had to be sequestered because they thought we may have been involved.”

The frontman says it was those events and the birth of his son that inspired The Color Before The Sun, the band’s first non-concept album. “I was having a hard time honing in on the conceptual writing. I was starting to write more personally. I started to ponder the idea of releasing it as a solo record because it didn’t fall into the confines of a Coheed record,” Sanchez told the outlet.

He continued, “The anticipation of being a father spilled into the songwriting, and I didn’t want to cloud that with a blanket of fiction…It was a really important time in my life and I thought, ‘If I’m going to express myself as honestly as possible, now would be the time to do it.’” The frontman and his family were eventually about to move back into their home.

The Color Before the Sun comes out Oct. 9 and you can buy the first single from the new disc, "You Got Spirit, Kid" here. (Watch the official lyric video for that tune here.) Coheed and Cambria are touring North America, the U.K. and Europe in the coming months. They next play at the Ink-N-Iron Festival in Nashville on Aug. 8.